I was invited to exhibit collaborative work made with my
husband Mark Harris along with an outdoor public work that engaged the
architecture of the site in relation to the surrounding buildings. In this
piece I was concerned with imagined structures developed from everyday found
objects. Three metal vents on an adjacent building were my starting point. I
took measurements and made replicas in wood. Using the lost wax process, I cast
the replicas of the vents in aluminum. I then connected the vents with long
stretches of aluminum wire. These sculptures used wire to suggest both volume
and form while simultaneously existing as a line in space. They could be read
as darning or stitching the building, or as a depiction of an imaginary
expulsion of air or gas from the building. The wire forms captured and
delineated a space that extended from the found element and could be thought of
as drawings in space, as this space or air within the work was an important
part of the piece.

Among our collaborative works, Mark Harris and I included
Colonial Stock Book, which juxtaposed actual West Indian stamps from around the
time of the Second World War with facsimile enlargements of details from those
same originals. These enlargements showed details of scenes of island labor,
predominantly rural, normally barely discernable in the background of the
originals. The details also removed the monarch’s head from each stamp. Their
captions were enlarged to be more easily legible since they tended to designate
a pastoral and picturesque aspect to what in reality was strenuous agricultural
labor endured under poor working conditions.

The book containing the stamps held a CD player and
speakers. The viewer could listen to 1930s’ Trinidadian calypsos whose lyrics
narrated in detail the effects of unemployment and the labor unrest resulting
from the low pay and appalling conditions of agricultural work.

Both the stamps and calypsos followed similar trade routes
out of the West Indian islands to the communities of islanders who had
emigrated to North America and Britain. The two cultural commodities presented
contradictory images of life on the islands, yet taken together they provide a
compelling summary of colonial indifference fuelling a humorous and insightful
local commentary, which at times was censored in the interests of preserving
this appearance of stability and contentment.

We also showed “Splash,” a piece that came about when I was
invited to participate in the Joint Technologies Application Programme in
England to make a series of rapid prototypes. I wanted to capture a moment of
action (as in the photograph of milk by Harold Edgerton), in this case, the
action of making a drawing, or painting and so shifting from something
2-dimensional to 3-dimensional. I asked Mark Harris for a drawing; at the time
he was making drawings of splashes, which I then interpreted using a 3-D
computer modeling program. Once the piece was made, we decided that it would be
appropriate to somehow suspend the form in space. To do this we made a
plexiglass box where the piece is housed in suspension.

The exhibition was reviewed by Maria Walsh in Art Monthly, “Mark Harris/Carmel
Buckley,” and by Jonathan Jones in the Thursday Guide, The Guardian.

Carmel Buckley–Sangre Grande

I was invited to exhibit collaborative work made with my
husband Mark Harris along with an outdoor public work that engaged the
architecture of the site in relation to the surrounding buildings. In this
piece I was concerned with imagined structures developed from everyday found
objects. Three metal vents on an adjacent building were my starting point. I
took measurements and made replicas in wood. Using the lost wax process, I cast
the replicas of the vents in aluminum. I then connected the vents with long
stretches of aluminum wire. These sculptures used wire to suggest both volume
and form while simultaneously existing as a line in space. They could be read
as darning or stitching the building, or as a depiction of an imaginary
expulsion of air or gas from the building. The wire forms captured and
delineated a space that extended from the found element and could be thought of
as drawings in space, as this space or air within the work was an important
part of the piece.

Among our collaborative works, Mark Harris and I included
Colonial Stock Book, which juxtaposed actual West Indian stamps from around the
time of the Second World War with facsimile enlargements of details from those
same originals. These enlargements showed details of scenes of island labor,
predominantly rural, normally barely discernable in the background of the
originals. The details also removed the monarch’s head from each stamp. Their
captions were enlarged to be more easily legible since they tended to designate
a pastoral and picturesque aspect to what in reality was strenuous agricultural
labor endured under poor working conditions.

The book containing the stamps held a CD player and
speakers. The viewer could listen to 1930s’ Trinidadian calypsos whose lyrics
narrated in detail the effects of unemployment and the labor unrest resulting
from the low pay and appalling conditions of agricultural work.

Both the stamps and calypsos followed similar trade routes
out of the West Indian islands to the communities of islanders who had
emigrated to North America and Britain. The two cultural commodities presented
contradictory images of life on the islands, yet taken together they provide a
compelling summary of colonial indifference fuelling a humorous and insightful
local commentary, which at times was censored in the interests of preserving
this appearance of stability and contentment.

We also showed “Splash,” a piece that came about when I was
invited to participate in the Joint Technologies Application Programme in
England to make a series of rapid prototypes. I wanted to capture a moment of
action (as in the photograph of milk by Harold Edgerton), in this case, the
action of making a drawing, or painting and so shifting from something
2-dimensional to 3-dimensional. I asked Mark Harris for a drawing; at the time
he was making drawings of splashes, which I then interpreted using a 3-D
computer modeling program. Once the piece was made, we decided that it would be
appropriate to somehow suspend the form in space. To do this we made a
plexiglass box where the piece is housed in suspension.

The exhibition was reviewed by Maria Walsh in Art Monthly, “Mark Harris/Carmel
Buckley,” and by Jonathan Jones in the Thursday Guide, The Guardian.